


Gavriel watches Aedion after the valg wars

by sarah_bae_maas



Category: Throne of Glass Series - Sarah J. Maas
Genre: gavriel - Freeform, lysaedion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-05
Updated: 2018-12-05
Packaged: 2019-09-07 16:18:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,297
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16857286
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sarah_bae_maas/pseuds/sarah_bae_maas
Summary: posted November 12, 2018





	Gavriel watches Aedion after the valg wars

As Gavriel left his body, the light fading from his eyes as the Valg gutted him and tore at his immortal flesh, he thought of his son – the one he barely knew.

He thought of the years he’d wish he’d had with him - his Pride.

In his living state, he did not have the big moments. Was not there when his love found out about the child, nor the first time she’d felt him kick, or when he was born.

His first steps.

His first words.

The first time he’d held a sword in his tiny little fist.

The first time he’d went to war.

Moments that Gavriel had desperately wanted to have with him. But one cannot reverse time.

He could tell he was not alone here. He watched as his body was made into shreds, and felt a warm presence at his side. He turned his head, away from the noise and chaos of war, and near cried at the sight.

It was  _her_. His love, the woman he would have destroyed worlds for. The mother of his child. She looked so much like the queen he had been serving for months that he forgot that once when he saw Aelin he thought that perhaps she might have been his daughter. The two looked eerily alike, and he was sure that if he ever saw Evalin Ashryver she would be the third in their trinity.

“Hello, my love,” she said, her voice sad. She reached a hand to his face, and he couldn’t believe it when he felt her skin against his.

“This, what is going on? What is this?” His voice was stricken as he looked at the princess that had him falling to his knees.

“I have waited for you,” she told him. “And I’m – I’m sorry. That you did not get more time with our son. I hope you can understand why I had to do what I did.”

He shook his head. “You were sick, sick enough to leave our son without a parent when if you had just come home you would have been _fine_. You didn’t even have to see me. I always respected your wishes for me to stay away from you. I wouldn’t have interfered.”

“He had Evalin and Rhoe and so many others that loved him dearly. He was never alone. And it was worth the risk. Just look at what Maeve has done. I couldn’t risk him being trapped in her claws.”

Gavriel heard the unsaid words. “Like me?”

She paused. “Yes. Like you.”

He looked back to his body, covered by many others at this point, the gate blessedly closed. He walked, and jolted at how easy the action was, and wondered exactly what being dead entailed. He knew the Queen of Terrasen had summoned spirits many a time, but the thought never really occurred to him that there was more than life.

He was walking, but then he was just gone. Appearing in the courtyard where his son was fighting, clutching his heart as he watched him struggle to survive.

His love, still at his side, stayed silent, watching with him. As he suspected she had for many years.

So, as a form not corporal, he watched his son from the Afterworld.

He was grief stricken, and Gavriel could never have expected such a response from the boy. Gavriel yearned to comfort him, but it would hopefully be many, many years before they spoke again. So, he did what he could. He stayed with him, at his side, his presence a solid one.

He yelled, cried, gasped as he watched the war unfold and his son’s role in it. He saw his boy cry at his body, and wished to the Gods he knew were no longer there that he could say just a few things.

_I love you. I’m proud to be your father. I wanted you._

It was the cadre’s reaction that was most unexpected. He knew on some level they were friends, especially after the events of the last few months, but he was somewhat shocked to see how sad they truly were. Rowan, he could understand. He did consider the new-king a true friend, and the fire queen had melted his heart enough to him to feel again. Lorcan on the other hand… maybe his human mate was doing the same to him. Maybe Gavriel had just always underestimated the male.

Gavriel stayed. Aedion’s whole life, he stayed.

His Ashryver Princess was at his side, silent, through the years as he watched.

Aedion was married not to long after the war to Lady Lysandra. Gavriel was not ashamed to admit he cried as he watched his son so exuberantly happy. And then, as Aedion officially became a Lord of Terrasen, Gavriel sobbed. So hard that the woman at his side patted his back in comfort.

And Gods above, when Aedion found out about his _first child_. Aedion was working in a stable, the paperwork that came with being a Lord making him fret. He had started doing much of the manual labour around their home in Carravere, just to feel like he was using his hands and to physically see the progress they were making in building them a home. Many of the mountain-fae had moved to Caraverre, and it did not take long for a small city to pop up in the wilderness.

It was a harsh winter’s day, and they had not long celebrated Aedion’s twenty seventh birthday. His was shoeing a horse, Lysandra watching him as a field mouse. When she flashed into her human form, Aedion only grinned, used to her constant changing.

“Welcome home.” He stood and kissed her lightly, embracing her in a tight hug.

“It’s good to be home,” she replied.

“How’s Evangeline?”  

“A true Lady, that’s for sure. Darrow is raising her well, and she said she would come as soon as the snow melts.”

“That’s good to hear. I was thinking maybe I could ask her to stay for a few months, teach her swordsmanship myself. The few sporadic days we have together aren’t enough, and I worry about her technique.”

Lysandra snorted. “She has the finest warriors in the land teaching her.”

“Yes, but she doesn’t have Rhoe, or Quinn. She needs me.”

Lysandra ran her fingers through his hair. “I have something to tell you,” she quickly changed topic.

From the look of things, Gavriel would have to leave soon to give Aedion and his wife some privacy. He nearly did, Aedion’s mother following him like a shadow, when he heard Lysandra’s words.

“I’m with child,” she’d whispered with a smile on her face.

Aedion gasped, his eyes wide and he threw his arms around his wife and twirled her into the hair, his face buried in the crook of her neck. As Aedion teared up, so did Gavriel.

“Wonderful,” said Gavriel’s Ashryver princess – the first words she’d spoken since the war.

When the baby was born, Lysandra and Aedion made the journey to Orynth so that Aelin and Yrene Westfall could be there for the birth. It was a long one, and Gavriel was unconsciously mirroring the nervous pacing his son was doing.

It was a small girl with Ashyver eyes as bright as the sun and golden hair to match her father’s. The near twin to Aelin’s own child.

Gavriel felt like he was suddenly there for the moments he missed. When the baby first held up her head, when she started crawling, when Aedion and Lysandra lost her for the first time. She’d crawled off while they were debating about the growing Snow Leopard population and she’d taken it upon herself to choose that moment to start walking. So, off she went. Gavriel decided to follow her. Even if there was nothing he could do to intervene, someone should be watching her. She was gone for five whole minutes when Aedion came bounding after her, following her scent.

That’s when Aedion and Lysandra decided no business talk in front of their children.

A year later, something happened that made Gavriel’s heart stop.

They didn’t know if it would or not, and no one had dared broach the topic yet, but Aedion, as a demi-fae, settled.

Aedion told Lysandra that it changed nothing, that he would give up his immortality anyway, but with a hand braced on his chest and the other holding their child, she told him no. He needed to be here longer, do more, than what a mortal timespan could offer.

Aedion acquiesced.

It was not long before their child was walking and starting to speak, and every night Aedion would tell her stories. Stories of Elide and Lysandra and Aelin. But the tales that dominated most were that of the cadre. Rowan got a lot of time, but Gavriel was the overwhelming subject of her bedtime tales.

Gavriel didn’t even know Aedion knew those stories. It made him clutch his chest, as if his still heart might leap from it. His Lady, still at his side, stepped close to him. His arm went around her shoulders, and she leaned into him.

Gavriel loved Aedion’s little girl, and the first time she shifted he turned to the silent woman at his side and grabbed her hand in glee, bringing it to his lips.

The little girl was six at the time of her first shifting. She had been leading her tiny brother around far past their bed time, one of his chubby hands in hers and the other holding a plush toy to his mouth. Neither could sleep, the wind was howling as loud as an injured snow leopard, and she thought it best to go to their parent’s room where they would be safe. She opened the door just a crack to see her father comforting her mother as she wept.

Lysandra was pregnant, her belly just starting to show. Both her last two children looked strikingly like Aedion, and the shifter was having an emotional crisis. She thought they were beautiful, the most stunning children in all of Erilea, but it made her question what she, herself, looked like. As a shifter, did she even have an appearance that was her own, that could be inherited? With this new baby on the way, she wondered if she would ever catch a glimpse of what she may have looked like.

Gavriel watched as his granddaughter’s face fell at her mother’s worry. Gavriel knew she didn’t really understand the implications of what Lysandra was saying, but what she did know was that her mother was sad her children didn’t look like her.

The girl let go of her brother. He plopped to the floor, content to just sit there while she stood and squeezed her fists, concentrating as hard as she could. She sighed heavily when she felt the magic that had been itching under her skin burst through her. And when she looked down to her long hair, it was the same dark mahogany as her mother’s.

She was one of two that inherited Lysandra’s gift. Her and her youngest brother. And then there was the other, another, who scared the living daylights out of her parents when she shifted into a snow leopard one afternoon and couldn’t turn back. Lysandra tried to guide her through it, but Aedion could scent the truth. Her shifting was not related to Lysandra, but to him. To his fae heritage that he had gotten from his fallen father.

Aedion had done exactly what Gavriel would have. He called Rowan for help. The King came, and helped his niece shift back to her human form.

Aedion laughed over a glass of wine with Rowan about it once the stress was over. Rowan said it was fitting, she was the one they named after Gavriel after all.

Two more children later and no more wars to be seen, Aedion took his oldest to Orynth to start her training with Rowan and Aelin.

She was as fierce as her father, and even Rowan had a hard time taming her.

When Aedion had to return to Carravere without his daughter, he was as sullen as an unfed house cat. He then returned every weekend with her siblings in tow so that they were all together. So that their family was whole.

As his other children grew, those visits became drop-offs as they joined Rowan and Aelin. Elide and Lorcan’s children were there too, and much later Evangeline’s heir came to try her trade in the fighting ring. Some came back to Carraverre, some found that their lives took them in other directions.

They all came home when it was time for Lady Lysandra to join the Afterworld.

Aedion, young as ever, gazed upon his wife just as he had the day he met her. He sat by her side as their young, generations of Ashryvers, poured in to give their emotional farewells. Their children came with children of their own, some of those children with even more, and the only dry eye in the room was Aedion. He wanted to stay strong for his wife, even if inside he was tearing apart. When she passed would be when he officially passed his title to his eldest daughter, and he was not ready for that burden to be placed on her, even if she had been preparing her whole life.

He could also not imagine his life without Lysandra.

Gavriel observed as Aedion politely excused himself from the room to see to his needs, only to watch his son only get as far as the next hallway before he fell to his knees and started sobbing, the pain so intense he could barely breathe.

In that moment, Gavriel got as close as he could to his son. He rested a hand on his shoulder and kneeled with him.

It was not long before Gavriel’s hand was replaced with the Queen of Terrasen’s.

“Get up, Aedion,” she said.

“I can’t.”

“You can, and you will. Because if you don’t get up now you never will, and your family needs you. Get up.”

Their matching eyes met, and Aedion could clearly see his pain mirrored in his cousins.

“I can’t stay here if she’s gone.” His voice was barely more than a whisper.

“Then you will return to Orynth as my Bloodsworn.”

He nodded and leant on her as he stood. She put an arm around his waist and he rested his head on hers.

“I don’t know how I can possibly say goodbye,” Aelin admitted.

“Neither do I.”

But neither had a choice.

It was three days later that Lysandra passed. Aelin was in bed with her, cradling the old woman to her while Aedion brushed her hair. Aelin was singing, horribly, and it put a smile on Lysandra’s face.

And, at some point after Aedion joined in with Aelin’s horrific bellowing, the smile still on the shifter’s face, she let go.

The cousins noticed, heard her heartbeat cease, but kept going. Even as the tears started to cut down their faces, even as their cries were so strong their words were mangled.

“How long have you been here?” Lysandra asked Gavriel, young and fruitful again.

“Always.”

Lysandra grinned and bowed her head to Aedion’s mother.

Then she was truly gone.

Wherever the spirts at peace went, another reality where life somehow continued.  

Aedion moved his residence to Orynth not long after. He was still general to Aelin’s armies, not that they had a huge amount to do. He still dined with any of the Bane from the Valg Wars that were living, not that there were many.

And it was nice living in Orynth again. It was funny to watch Aelin and her dynamics with others, especially her Bloodsworn. Aedion was still surprised every time he saw her and Fenrys blink at each other weirdly, and Aedion and Rowan often speculated as to what they meant when they did it. Aelin, no matter how much they begged, refused to tell them. Gavriel wondered if he should follow them for a bit, just in case they let it slip, but he didn’t want to stray too far from his son.

Over the next few years, Aedion escorted Aelin around the continent and further as they farewelled their mortal friends. The hardest for her were Chaol and Dorian, the hardest for him was Elide. But all the loses hit them deeply, and there were nights that were spent in total silence.

In those decades, Gavriel stayed close to the woman at his side. It was hard for him to see them all fading, to know that soon the Court of Terrsen would be the only ones alive in Erilea who had witnessed and fought in the Valg Wars. Of all the battles Gavriel had been a part of, that was the most memorable one, the one that haunted him still – and not because it was the one that caused his death.

Aedion became more reserved once it was his children who started to pass. Gavriel saw each and every one of them move on. None had settled, nor had their children, but they did not see it as a curse. When Aedion wept at their side, his face smooth and body still youthful, they would tell him they were ready, that immortality would have been too long for them.

It did not take long for Aedion to speak to only those he was related to in an effort to make no new attachments. Even then, he came to not be as invested in their lives.

The land of Erilea warped and changed over the next thousand years. The countries and the ruling families changed, but the Witch Queendom, Adarlan and Terrasen remained the same, unified as they had been all those years ago.

Dark days descended when it was Rowan that faded. His time had come. At well over a thousand years old, it was something they had prepared for. Gavriel still ached as he watched it happen, just as he had with every death in the cadre. Lorcan had long gone and Fenrys had crossed over just under a century prior. Vaughn never returned.

The death of your loved ones was never something you could become accustomed to. As Rowan left, Gavriel embraced the woman beside him. He needed her comfort, and she understood. She stroked his hair and kissed his brow, and somehow it was enough.

And when he was gone, and it was just Aedion and Aelin left in the dark catacombs beneath the city, the sun rose on Aelin Ashryver Whiterthorn Galathynius’ reign for the last time.

The next day her first born was coronated. The ceremony was beautiful, but the shadows of Rowan’s death remained on the near-twin’s faces. Aelin said one last goodbye to her family, and then she and Aedion left.

They would return only once. And that was to be buried next to their beloved.

They did what they had longed to do as children who had been ravaged by war. They went far and wide to lands that had never heard their names, or of their lands, or of the valg. They pretended they were siblings and explored the world to its fullest extent.

If only she had seen what Gavriel and the Lady beside him saw. Aelin’s warrior never left her side, just as Gavriel never left his son’s.

The pair mourned. And every night Aedion held Aelin while she cried.

They knew, together, that their time was coming to an end.

They had lived long, long lives, and as Gavriel gazed upon his son as he took his last breaths, he finally felt like he knew the man he helped create.


End file.
